The young Soviet coun­try could not grow and flour­ish with­out the sup­port and patri­o­tism of its peo­ple. From the early days of the Soviet Union, the ide­ol­ogy organ­i­sa­tions aimed to tar­get cit­i­zens of all ages, oblig­ing them to belong in order to do well in life. So the pes­ter­ing had to start early: when kids start school (the school age 7 years old in the USSR), the school ide­ol­ogy organ­i­sa­tion would take them under the wing, with the prospect of nur­tur­ing the future mem­bers of the Com­mu­nist Party.

The very first move­ment every child would belong to was called the Octo­ber kids, after the Great Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, after which the new gov­ern­ment came into power.

Usu­ally the inau­gu­ra­tion was an all-school cel­e­bra­tion where each kid got a for­mal insignia pin to wear and the rules to life and liv­ing were announced. The pin fea­tures a ruby-red star with the por­trait of young Lenin in the centre.

A usual class was divided into the groups of five peo­ple in each, like lit­tle stars, which was a sym­bol of the Soviet regime.  An older stu­dent -  gen­er­ally well-performing and a respon­si­ble one — would curate such a star, by giv­ing them songs to sing, sto­ries to lis­ten to and doing other things to nur­ture the sense of patri­o­tism. The main goal, how­ever, was the cre­ation of a“Pioneer Cult” and its main­te­nance: the next step after the Octo­brists, which kids joined at the age of 9. They had their own set of rules, all rhymed, like a good procla­ma­tion to live by. The rules went as following:

There are five of our rules, let them be our only tools!

We are active kids — we are Octo­brists! You, Octo­ber, don’t for­get -  com­mu­nism is there yet.
We are coura­geous  kids — we are Octo­brists! We are liv­ing our life like our heroes — full of light!
We are dili­gent  kids — we are Octo­brists! Only those who like to work get suc­cess­ful in this world.
We are thruth­ful  kids — we are Octo­brists! Never shall betray a friend — that’s the point we defend.
We are happy  kids — we are Octo­brists! Our songs, our laughs and dances are to share in equal stances.

Kids of all ages enjoyed their own ide­o­log­i­cally cor­rect mass media — there were two pop­u­lar mag­a­zines, Mourzilka and Merry Pic­tures. The  mag­a­zines still exist, albeit they are now ide­ol­ogy and propaganda-free kids mags.

The Mourzilka char­ac­ter was a yel­low furry crea­ture of unknown ori­gin, who had a cam­era and a very inquis­i­tive mind. It was born in 1937 and became an instant success.

Merry Pic­tures had a humour focus and offered a vari­ety of quizzes, puz­zles, jokes, as well as many sug­ges­tions on how to cre­ate toys or give an old toy a make over. It was a fine mag­a­zine made by tal­ented writ­ers and artists, and it was very, very popular!

What­ever hap­pened to the Octo­ber kids when they grew up? At the age of nine the best Octo­ber kids  — the ones with the best marks, good behav­iour and pos­i­tive feed­back were to pro­ceed to the fol­low­ing level of Soviet pio­neer­ing. But this is a totally dif­fer­ent story.

To be continued.

Related posts:

1. The Patri­otic Edu­ca­tion in USSR. Part 2  —  Pio­neers, Soviet Boy Scouts
2. Good Soviet Kids Go to Heaven? Nope, They Go to Artek!
3. Best of Win­ter 2009  –  2010
4. Happy Birth­day Dear USSR! The Great Octo­ber Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion. Novem­ber 7^th 1917.
5. Fash­ion in the USSR. DIY.